Georgius Merula (c. 1430 – 1494) was an Italian humanist and classical scholar.

Life

Merula was born in Alessandria in

Piedmont it, Piemontese , population_note = , population_blank1_title = , population_blank1 = , demographics_type1 = , demographics1_footnotes = , demographics1_title1 = , demographics1_info1 = , demographics1_title2 ...

. The greater part of his life was spent in

Venice Venice ( ; it, Venezia ; vec, Venesia or ) is a city in northeastern Italy and the capital of the Veneto region. It is built on a group of 118 small islands that are separated by canals and linked by over 400 bridges. The isla ...

and

Milan Milan ( , , Lombard language, Lombard: ; it, Milano ) is a city in northern Italy, capital of Lombardy, and the List of cities in Italy, second-most populous city proper in Italy after Rome. The city proper has a population of about 1.4 ...

, where he held a professorship and continued to teach until his death. While he was teaching at Venice, he was the subject of a personal polemic by Cornelio Vitelli, directed at his scholarship; and Vitelli replaced him in 1483.

Works

Merula produced the

editio princeps In classical scholarship, the ''editio princeps'' ( plural: ''editiones principes'') of a work is the first printed edition of the work, that previously had existed only in manuscripts, which could be circulated only after being copied by hand. ...

Plautus Titus Maccius Plautus (; c. 254 – 184 BC), commonly known as Plautus, was a Roman playwright of the Old Latin period. His comedies are the earliest Latin literary works to have survived in their entirety. He wrote Palliata comoedia, the ...

(1472), of the '' Scriptores rei rusticae,'' Cato, Varro,

Columella Lucius Junius Moderatus Columella (; Arabic: , 4 – ) was a prominent writer on agriculture in the Roman Empire. His ' in twelve volumes has been completely preserved and forms an important source on Roman agriculture, together with the ...

, Palladius (1472) and possibly of

Martial Marcus Valerius Martialis (known in English as Martial ; March, between 38 and 41 AD – between 102 and 104 AD) was a Roman poet from Hispania (modern Spain) best known for his twelve books of ''Epigrams'', published in Rome between AD 86 an ...

(1471). He also published commentaries on portions of

Cicero Marcus Tullius Cicero ( ; ; 3 January 106 BC – 7 December 43 BC) was a Roman statesman, lawyer, scholar, philosopher, and academic skeptic, who tried to uphold optimate principles during the political crises that led to the est ...

(especially the '' De finibus''), on

Ausonius Decimius Magnus Ausonius (; – c. 395) was a Roman poet and teacher of rhetoric from Burdigala in Aquitaine, modern Bordeaux, France. For a time he was tutor to the future emperor Gratian, who afterwards bestowed the consulship on him ...

Juvenal Decimus Junius Juvenalis (), known in English as Juvenal ( ), was a Roman poet active in the late first and early second century CE. He is the author of the collection of satirical poems known as the '' Satires''. The details of Juvenal's lif ...

, Curtius Rufus, and other classical authors. Merula wrote also
Bellum scodrense
' (1474), an account of the siege of Shkodra (1474) (Scutari) by the Turks, and ''Antiquitates vicecomitum'', ''The history of the Visconti, dukes of Milan, down to the death of Matteo the Great'' (1322). He violently attacked Politian (Poliziano), whose ''Miscellanea'' (a collection of notes on classical authors) were declared by Merula to be either plagiarized from his own writings or, when original, to be entirely incorrect.

References

Attribution {{DEFAULTSORT:Merula, Georgius 1430s births 1494 deaths Italian Renaissance humanists Italian classical scholars People from Alessandria